Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston's Dark Horse Comics series will be developed into a multiplatform franchise.

Black Hammer, the critically acclaimed comic book series created by Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston, is expanding into television and film, with Legendary Entertainment responsible for bringing the epic superhero storyline to the screen.

The multi-generational narrative, which spans multiple genres as well as eras as it investigates the fate of superheroes and villains in the fictional world of Spiral City, has won plaudits for combining a metatextual approach to superheroes and a character-based focus on the people behind the masks. Publisher Dark Horse has expanded the comic book series with a number of spinoff titles, including Sherlock Frankenstein and Doctor Star. The central Black Hammer title won the Eisner Award for best new series in 2017, with Lemire nominated for best writer for his work on the series in 2017 and 2018.

Legendary plans to deliver what it describes as “a multiplatform, interconnected universe of characters and storytelling that audiences today really yearn for” with the property.

With this news, Black Hammer joins a number of Lemire-written projects in development for the screen, including Gideon Falls, his Image Comics series with Andrea Sorrentino at Hivemind; and his IDW/Top Shelf graphic novel Underwater Welder, currently being developed by Anonymous Content and Ryan Gosling.